We have been lucky as far as the weather is concerned so far this spring as we have been rewarded with an early summer and some brilliant sunshine. Unfortunately this doesn’t improves my situation as far as cluster attacks go. As soon as we have a slight change in the weather the attacks begin and once again i am being woken up in the early hours of the morning. Every morning at 3 or 4am my eyes open wide and i know instantly why i am awake and for some reason i never seem to feel tired when it happens. Normally when you wake up you still feel tired until you are fully awake but when you are woken by the beast with its gift if pain you are always wide awake and feel as though you haven't slept at all.
Since i was diagnosed with a hiatus hernia i have had to have my bed at a strange angle so i don't build up stomach acid in the chest area during the night when sleeping. This used to cause my head to be at an awkward angle and cause my neck to be in pain all the time. In the end i had to get a new bed and have the base of the bed risen at 35 degrees so that the mattress lays flat even though its up at an angle and this will help to reduce the strain on my neck at night. The pain in my neck started over 2 months ago and has been gradually getting worst as time goes on but when i got a new bed it started to improve. Now all of a sudden its started to get bad again and seems to coincide with the strange allergic reaction i keep getting.
I have been back and fore the doctors every week for the last 2 months complaining about nettle rash and sore mouth and painful neck that ahs appeared for no reason. I have tried everything i can think of to identify what is causing this reaction but nothing seems to stand out. I stopped anything with wheat in and also dairy products in case i suddenly become intolerant to these foods. I stopped different medications and different drinks in case this was setting of an allergic reaction but still nothing seems to change it. I ended up with thrush inside my mouth and on my tongue and believe me when i say that is a horrible thing to suffer from. I ended up having 3 different treatments over 5 weeks to try and get it under control and only now in the sixth week we have finally started to get rid of it.
I am still getting mild allergic reaction symptoms form god knows what but it has started to get a little better and it is possible that it could be the thrush causing all these strange symptoms. I am hoping now the thrush is starting to go and i am slowly feeling better that the rashes and sore mouth and pain will start to ease and i will get back to my old self again. I am grateful that my cluster attacks seem to be behaving themselves and haven’t increased in quite some time. I am only getting 1 or 2 attacks a day and now have more pain free days than ever before so i am trying to make sure this doesn't change and i don't do anything to aggravate it. The neck pains i keep getting does sometimes set of attacks when they become severe but i know when that's about to happen and i am able to prepare myself with my injections in order to abort the on coming attack.
Now, thankfully, as the warmer weather is here i should get less and less attacks each week and should start to feel better now that i am getting things under control. I don't want to speak too soon as i know from experience this can suddenly change over night and i could end up really ill once again. I am hoping that as i am feeling better i will be able to start getting out and about a bit more now and should be able to enjoy the sunshine and even get some fishing in this year. I missed out on a lot of fishing last year and it really drove me insane watching others getting out catching fish and i just couldn’t do it myself due to the levels of pain i was always in. So fingers crossed this will be a good year for me and you will find me on the river or lake bank real soon.
